Day 12: Concordia to Bianga

by Khalid Omar

We had decided to head straight to Goro I / Bianga, and so planned to leave early in the morning - which didn't happen, as usual! 8:15 am and the tent is finally coming down, and we left at 8:30.

Retracing our steps backwards seemed a bit strange, as we had originally planned to go over the Gondogoro La pass into Hunza, but sadly this year the pass was closed. A number of teams had tried to bridge the crevasse blocking the route, but no one had succeeded so far. We had spoken to numerous people about attempting to cross the Gondogoro La, but as we passed group after group heading back the same way to Askole the realization slowly sank in that it was not to be.

Arrived Goro II at 1:30, so it's a five hour steady walk from Concordia. We stopped there for green tea and to wait for the rest of our group to catch up - Asad, Atif and Khizer R. had fallen behind.

Met the mountain company's group there- 12-14 people, along with Roland Hunter, their tour guide. Their group is from the UK & Norway mostly, interesting people. We had gone up to meet Roland Hunter, as we had been using the Mountain Companies guide as our reference throughout the trip, and he invited us in to their mess tent where their group was finishing lunch. It was an interesting half an hour, with much talk of far away places...

The weather is worsening, as we move further away from Concordia - it turns out we were lucky as we've had the best possible weather for trekking and mountain watching. It's getting cloudy now, so hopefully tomorrow won't be too sunny. Considering we're walking on a glacier with snow capped peaks all around, it gets surprisingly hot in the sun.

There was a 4 person Australian group camped at Goro I, spent some time with them. Had our usual Dal/Chaawal for dinner and turned in early.

Enter Your Comment

Please be considerate of others. Keep comments relevant. Content deemed inappropriate or offensive may be edited and/or deleted. Please press "post" only once, at times when the server may be slow, it may take up to a minute for your post to show. For feedback not pertaining to his particular entry, please use the forums.

You are reading Day 12: Concordia to Bianga, an entry made on May 4, 2008 by Khalid Omar, part of the K2 Base Camp Hike travelogue.

There have been 0 comments on this entry. The most recent comment is by